Writers Forum

Last updated

Writers Forum is a small publisher, workshop and writers' network established by Bob Cobbing. [1] The roots of Writers Forum were in the 1954 arts organisation Group H, and the And magazine that Cobbing edited. [2] The writers' branch of Group H was called Writers Forum. [3] In 1963 a press with the publishing imprint "Writers Forum" was begun and administered by Cobbing, John Rowan and Jeff Nuttall. [4] Between 1963 and 2002 Writers' Forum published more than one thousand pamphlets and books including works by John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, and P. J. O'Rourke, as well as a wide range of British Poetry Revival modernist poets, such as Eric Mottram, Bill Griffiths, Geraldine Monk, Maggie O'Sullivan, Paula Claire [5] and Sean Bonney. [6] While publishing was integral to the Cobbing-led workshop, it also provided an opportunity for poets to read their works in a supportive and non-critical environment.

Contents

After Cobbing's death Writers Forum was directed by Lawrence Upton and Adrian Clarke until July 2010, when Clarke resigned. [7] Since early July 2010, Writers Forum has been directed by Lawrence Upton (until his death in 2020) with assistance from others. Tina Bass was appointed Assistant Director in December 2010. Writers Forum continues to hold workshops and to publish. The magazine And ceased in 2010; but Pocket Litter was started in 2011.

A break-off "Writers Forum (second series)" workshop was founded in 2010, which, though having similarities in stated aims, is not supported by Writers Forum. [8] The Forum's last publication before the split was SJ Fowler's Poggel Intricate. [9] Organisations with similar names in Chile and Australia are recognised.

Related Research Articles

Jeff Nuttall

Jeffrey Addison Nuttall was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of literary critic A. D. Nuttall.

"The British Poetry Revival" is the general name given to a loose poetry movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival was a modernist-inspired reaction to the Movement's more conservative approach to British poetry. The poets included an older generation - Bob Cobbing, Paula Claire, Tom Raworth, Eric Mottram, Jeff Nuttall, Andrew Crozier, Lee Harwood, Allen Fisher, Iain Sinclair—and a younger generation: Paul Buck, Bill Griffiths, John Hall, John James, Gilbert Adair, Lawrence Upton, Peter Finch, Ulli Freer, Ken Edwards, Robert Gavin Hampson, Gavin Selerie, Frances Presley, Elaine Randell, Robert Sheppard, Adrian Clarke, Clive Fencott, Maggie O'Sullivan, Cris Cheek, Tony Lopez and Denise Riley.

Bill Griffiths (poet)

Brian William Bransom Griffiths, known as Bill Griffiths, was a poet and Anglo-Saxon scholar associated with the British Poetry Revival.

Bob Cobbing was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival.

The Association of Little Presses (ALP) was an organisation dedicated to promoting small press publishing activity in Britain and Ireland.

Lawrence Upton, was a poet, graphic artist and sound artist, and director of Writers Forum.

<i>Angel Exhaust</i>

Angel Exhaust is a British poetry magazine founded by Steve Pereira and Adrian Clarke in the late 1970s. Andrew Duncan took over as editor in 1992, and by 1993 it was one of the first poetry magazines to appear regularly on the internet. The magazine is headquartered in Nottingham.

Geraldine Monk British poet

Geraldine Monk is a British poet. She was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1952. Since the late 1970s, she has published many collections of poetry and has recorded her poetry in collaboration with musicians. Monk's poetry has been published in many anthologies, most recently appearing in the Anthology of 20th Century British and Irish Poetry.

<i>Boston Review</i> American magazine

Boston Review is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form is a "forum", featuring a lead essay and several responses. Boston Review also publishes an imprint of books with MIT Press.

Literature Wales National literature promotion agency and writers society

Literature Wales is the Welsh national literature promotion agency and society of writers, existing to promote Welsh-language and English-language literature in Wales. It offers bursaries for writing projects, runs literary events and lectures, and provides financial assistance for creative mentoring and other literary-based ventures. The organisation also selects the National Poet for Wales, and manages competitions including Wales Book of the Year, the Cardiff International Poetry Competition, and the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition.

Sean Noel Bonney was an English poet born in Brighton and brought up in the north of England. He lived in London and, from 2015 up until the time of his death, in Berlin. He was married to the poet Frances Kruk. Charles Bernstein published poet William Rowe's obituary for Bonney in US online magazine Jacket2 Detailed notes to Bonney's poetics by nom-de-plume 'Prolapsarian' are published on Tumblr.

Michael J. Weller

Michael John Weller is a British underground comics artist, political writer, cartoonist, activist and album-cover designer.

Cris Cheek is a British multimodal poet and academic who is a professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He began his career working alongside Bill Griffiths and Bob Cobbing at the Poetry Society printshop in London and with the Writers Forum group, who met with regularity on the premises in Earls Court. He is also the co-founded of a poetry performance group. He has collaborated on electronic music improvisations and several released cassette. In 1981, he was a co-founder of Chisenhale Dance Space.

Adrian Clarke is a contemporary British poet. His collections include Skeleton Sonnets, Former Haunts, Possession: Poems 1996-2006, and Eurochants.

Clive Fencott is a writer and sound poet, a performer associated with the British Poetry Revival, and an academic.

Steven J. Fowler or SJ Fowler is a contemporary English poet, writer and avant-garde artist, and the founder of European Poetry Festival.

Robert Sheppard is British poet and critic. He is at the forefront of the movement sometimes called "linguistically innovative poetry".

Ágnes Lehóczky Hungarian poet, academic and translator (born 1976)

Ágnes Lehóczky is a Hungarian poet, academic and translator born in Budapest, 1976.

Alembic was a poetry magazine established by Peter Barry, Ken Edwards, and Robert Gavin Hampson, which appeared eight times during the 1970s. It existed between 1973 and 1978. The magazine was based in London.

Paula Claire is a British Poet-Artist, whose work spans the areas of sound, visual, concrete and performance poetry. She was associated with the British Poetry Revival Movement in the 1970s and a member of Konkrete Canticle, a poetry collective founded by Bob Cobbing, which performed works for multiple voices and instruments. She has performed and exhibited her poetry internationally since 1969, creating site-specific performance pieces and using the voice contributions of her audience. She is founder and curator of the Paula Claire Archive: fromWORDtoART - International Poet-Artists, a collected body of work by fellow poet-artists.

References

  1. ↑ Sheppard, Robert (7 October 2002). "Obituary: Bob Cobbing". The Guardian . London: GMG. ISSN   0261-3077. OCLC   60623878 . Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  2. ↑ Richard Caddel, Peter Quartermain (1999). Other: British and Irish poetry since 1970. Wesleyan University Press. p. xxiv. ISBN   9780819522580 . Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  3. ↑ Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground, 1961-1971, Jonathon Green, (Heinemann, 1988), p. 57.
  4. ↑ Peter Barry, Poetry Wars, British Poetry of the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court (Salt Publishing, 2006). Foreword by Andrew Motion.
  5. ↑ "Catalogues and Collections" (PDF).
  6. ↑ "Writers Forum publications in the British Library".
  7. ↑ "About Writers Forum « Writers Forum Information". wfuk.org.uk. 2012. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  8. ↑ Upton, Lawrence (2012). "Writers Forum". wfuk.org.uk. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
  9. ↑ "A note on : 11 years since I started, the Writers Forum". SJ Fowler. Retrieved 2020-06-07.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.